A LORRY driver who hatched a bizarre plot with thieves to steal his é15,481 load of chocolate has been jailed for a year.

Kevin Ormerod, 51, a lorry driver for more than 30 years, invented a hijacking story to throw police and his employers off the scent, Bolton Crown Court was told.

Ormerod, of Middlegreen, Ashton under Lyne, claimed two masked men in a car forced him to pull over after he left the James Nuttall haulage depot in Castleton, Rochdale, then drive to an industrial estate to dump his load.

He claimed he was then told to drive to Birmingham or else he and his family would be injured. But Ormerod's lies were unravelled when his cab's satellite navigation tracking system logged only the one stop - at the industrial estate.

Deception

He admitted the deception to police and claimed two men he had met in a pub the night before forced him to go through with it.

But Recorder Andrew Nuttall called Ormerod's scam a "well thought out and planned theft" and said "vague" claims he was threatened "lacked credibility".

He said: "You committed a very serious breach of trust. You assisted in stealing from your employers and sought to diminish your involvement by the story that you told.

"Hauliers put a great deal of trust in their employees - they are entitled to put their trust in their employees. The fact the hijack story was false was inevitably going to be discovered."

The trailer, which had contained 26 pallets of Cadburys chocolate, was found empty two weeks later in April last year in Clayton.

Omerod pleaded guilty to theft at an earlier court hearing. The chocolate and the other men said to be involved have never been traced.